Crush
by Damselfliegen
Summary: I barely spoke to her the rest of the week, except as necessitated by our status as lab partners. Barely civil. Hyperaware of her presence several inches from me and of every movement she made. Obsessively thinking about her as I lay in bed each night.
1. Chapter 1

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	2. Chapter 2

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	3. Chapter 3

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	4. Chapter 4

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	5. Chapter 5

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	6. Chapter 6

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	7. Chapter 7

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	8. Chapter 8

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	9. Chapter 9

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	10. Chapter 10

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	11. Chapter 11

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	12. Chapter 12

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	13. Chapter 13

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	14. Chapter 14

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	15. Chapter 15

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	16. Chapter 16

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	17. Chapter 17

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	18. Chapter 18

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	19. Chapter 19

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	20. Chapter 20

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	21. Chapter 21

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	22. Chapter 22

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	23. Chapter 23

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	24. Chapter 24

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	25. Chapter 25

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	26. Chapter 26

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	27. Chapter 27

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	28. Chapter 28

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	29. Chapter 29

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	30. Chapter 30

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	31. Chapter 31

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	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**, _**in which the shit starts hitting the fan**_

The 30th of December. Friday. I wondered if physically crossing the days off my calendar would cheer me up. I had sort of slogged through the whirlwind of eggnog-soaked holiday parties, last-minute shopping, gingerbread, pomander balls, and boughs of holly this year—Esmé was _big_ on Christmas—mooning over how much I would enjoy it all if only Bella was here with me. We were texting each other a lot during the day and calling each other at night, more than usual because we were used to seeing one another every day. She seemed pleased to be with her mom and to be back in San Francisco, which also made me agonize a little that she might be wishing she were back there instead of in Forks.

For Christmas I had given her an iPod Shuffle loaded with songs, and she had given me a hardcover copy of _Pale Fire, _since I had forgotten the book at her house that day but still wanted to read it. I had started to read it over break, but every time I started to feel either amused or confused or blown away by something in it, my mind would start wandering to her and I decided it would be better, basically, to read it when she was back.

And now it was almost New Year's, only a few more days left until school started again, but all I could see was the giant hump of another celebration to get through. I had been cleaning my room, and as I shuffled down the hall carrying my laundry hamper—I was especially diligent about doing my laundry these days, for obvious reasons, not wanting to leave it piling up for so long that Esmé might decide to do a load for me—as I bumped down the hall past Carlisle's study, I heard his voice from within, sounding strident, and then a sharp thump as if he had thrown the phone at the door. That was weird. I set down the basket, rapped on his door, and poked my head in. "Everything all right?" I asked.

He was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. "Oh, Edward, sorry." He straightened up. He glanced hesitantly at me, then sighed.

"We're having some problems with the Quileute tribe not wanting to renew the easement for the dig."

I froze. _Shit. _Could this have anything to do with…_shit._ Was that possible?

"Why?" I managed to ask, picking up the phone and handing it to him.

He sighed again. "Their reasons are a little unclear, but we have a meeting scheduled in three weeks' time. We'll get more information then."

Carlisle seemed stressed out.

"We've been really making good headway, but we still have a lot of work to do. And now we're on hold. I'm on hold, I'll be twiddling my thumbs for the next three weeks. Even the clinic will be closed." He meant the clinic on the reservation. Carlisle loved to work, and taking a break always went against the grain.

He continued. "And then there's the bigger picture…if this dig cannot continue, there is no longer any reason for us to remain in Forks." Meaning our family. I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my belly.

Moving to Forks had been a difficult family decision. At first he had commuted to the dig when we lived in Seattle because he only needed to be there occasionally, but as his presence at the site had become increasingly vital, the ridiculousness of that commute from Seattle began to take its toll.

"We _are_ making a lot of sacrifices to be here, with you kids' education for example…"

I quickly said, "Well, it won't make much difference if we move next year in terms of college apps, so..."

"Well, if this dig ends now, I don't know why we'd stay another semester."

I felt like my head was going to explode. I must have looked upset, because Carlisle appeared to remember himself and said,

"Edward, don't worry about this business. I don't mean to burden you. These are all big family decisions we'll make together. I know moving has been hard on you kids, first to Seattle, then here. Look, for now I will just focus on working this issue out with the tribe. It's probably just a hiccup."

I stood awkwardly in front of his desk for another minute, then nodded.

"OK. Sorry, Dad." I didn't know what else to say. I sincerely hoped this all had nothing to do with me. I wondered if I should tell him. I had to think.

He nodded and I left the room. I took my laundry downstairs, started a load, and then went into the rumpus room, adjacent to the laundry room, and flung myself down on the coach. Jasper and Emmett looked up from a game of backgammon.

"What's up, Edward?" Jasper asked me. I wasn't sure I was supposed to tell them anything, so I mumbled, "Nothing."

"Aw, Eduardo is missing his honey. Don't worry, Señor, she'll be back in a few days and then maybe you can finally get around to banging her," Emmett snickered.

"Shut the hell up, Emmett."

"I'm sorry. What I meant to say was, she'll be back in a few days and then you can sit around and talk about your feelings."

"Please, Emmett, I am _not _in the mood."

Rosalie glanced over at me from the other couch, where she was playing Frogger with Alice.

"_You're_ especially whiny today, darling. Have you been up in your room playing Smiths albums all morning again?"

I got up and left the room, thinking I would call Bella. I didn't want to tell her about that bombshell Carlisle had dropped, not yet anyway, I just wanted to hear her voice. But before I even reached my room, my phone rang. It was Bella.

"Hey, I have some bad news." Oh my God. What now.

Turned out Bella's mom was going to rendezvous with her boyfriend and the circus in Perth next, but did not leave San Francisco for a few more days and she really wanted Bella to stay a little bit into next week, even if she missed a couple days of school. I moaned.

"I can barely wait to see you as it is…" I objected.

"I know…here's the deal, though. She really wants to meet you. Can you think of a good excuse to come down here?"

I told her I would work on it. We had a brief conversation, then hung up. I laid on my bed, thinking it over, until I hit on it. I jumped up and went to my desk, opening the e-mail in my latop. I had been contacted by the track and field coach at Stanford, but at the time was focused on East Coast schools. But what _about_ Stanford. Ever since Chelsea Clinton had gone there, it was on the radar as the Ivy of the West. Seems like I should give it a look at the very least, right? I phoned the number given in the e-mail and, luckily, was able to reach an assistant coach in the office during this dead week. I apologized for my late response and told him I was interested in making a trip down to Stanford for a tour. He said he would arrange something for first thing next week. Perfect.

I went back to Carlisle's study and knocked on the door. "Come in," he called, then went back to his phone call, holding one finger up while he finished it. When he got off the phone, I told him about my newly conceived interest in touring Stanford. Should probably do it right away if I was going to consider applying. I even had a place to stay: Alice had checked with Bella, and Bella's mom was fine with my crashing with them in San Francisco. Her mom even, uh, suggested I come down there for New Year's because she was having a dinner party and some friends who were alums were coming, I could talk to them…._hm, maybe I shouldn't have invented that last bit, in case Esmé wants to talk to Bella's mom, but oh well._

It was helpful that Carlisle was so distracted by his crisis. He seemed a little surprised by this sudden development but had no objection to my wanting to visit Stanford. He had thought I was being a little rigid and shortsighted about restricting my interest to the East. And Carlisle and Esmé were not sticklers for perfect attendance—in fact, they were often taking us kids out of school for camping and other wholesome family activities during warmer weather—as long as we kept our grades up. My grades were excellent.

"OK, sure. Can you make the arrangements? You can use some of our Southwest miles." He wanted to get back to his phone calls.

I sprinted downstairs to fill Alice in on the imaginary phone call she had made to Bella on my behalf, then back upstairs to call Bella back. She told me to have Esmé e-mail her mom if she wanted to check in. Tomorrow morning I would be on a plane to S.F.

_**Author's Note: I am starting to understand why people are always begging for reviews in these things. I love getting them! Don't make me beg... Please please me.**_


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter 33, **_**in which Edward and Bella take a break from the shit hitting the fan to celebrate New Year's**_

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Higgenbotham."

She giggled, sounding more like Bella's sister than her mother.

"Gawd, _please _call me Renée. So nice to meet _you, _Edward," she said coming in for a hug. "I've heard _so_ much about you."

Over her head, I glanced inquisitively at Bella, who shook her head slightly and shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm being sarcastic," Renée added.

I liked her at once.

Sometimes you hear people say to study a girl's mother to see how she'll turn out…Renée just looked like a more mature version of Bella, except with shorter hair a few shades lighter, blue eyes, and laugh lines. She had the same slender litheness and appealing prettiness.

It was twoish. We had just met up with her mother at a noodle house in Japantown, after Bella had picked me up in the airport alone, driving an Austin Mini Cooper. Not one of the new ones, but an original that looked like it dated from the 1960s. I was afraid I wasn't actually going to fit in it, but it was somewhat roomier inside than it appeared.

"Aren't you afraid to drive this thing on the freeway?" I laughed. "Whose car is this?"

"It belongs to the people whose house we're staying in. It's the perfect car for this town because you can park it anywhere." Bella's mom owned a flat in a neighborhood called Duboce Triangle, which her parents had helped her buy when she and Bella's dad got divorced. But they were renting it out while she was traveling. Her mom was housesitting for friends who had a flat in the Cow Hollow neighborhood and were away for the holidays, and that's where they had spent Christmas, with some other relatives who had come to visit.

"Do they know you're driving it?"

"Hm, not sure. Better me than my mom, though."

As we drove through the city, I admired the way she navigated hairy traffic in this little manual car. I had driven her truck and I knew she could drive stick, but I had never been driven anywhere by her. In Seattle, driving on the freeway could be a little hectic but city streets were pretty mellow. In Forks, of course, there was just one main road. Driving in San Francisco seemed a little maniacal, but she seemed accustomed to it. "The problem with driving here is that it's full of immigrants and tourists, and half the streets are one-way, and then of course there are the hills." She cut off a driver who was trying to cut her off in order to get across three lanes of traffic and make a left turn the wrong way onto a one-way street. "Sorry, guy," she murmured.

I looked around. "Where _are_ those famous hills?"

"Not so much here. More that way," she said, waving her hand at the northeast. "But why don't we go drop your bag at home right now and I'll take you down a hill on the way." She wasn't kidding. She made a left, then a right, and I saw we had somehow come to the top of a hill that appeared to be a sixty-degree angle. She had to crane her head to be able to see the road as we started down it. After we dropped my bag off, we came back up the same hill, which was kind of tricky because there was a stop sign at the top and she had to use the parking brake to keep us from rolling backwards down the steep incline after making the stop. I found myself gripping the sides of my seat.

We had a nice lunch of udon with her mom, who asked me a lot of questions in a friendly way, filled me in on what she and Bella had been doing the last couple of weeks, and told some crazy stories about her travels in Asia. Her boyfriend had gotten her a job with Cirque de Soleil doing stagecraft: helping with the scenery rigging and assisting the costume designer. She was very chatty and easy to talk to.

Renée _was _in fact throwing a dinner party for New Year's Eve, but Bella asked me if I wouldn't rather go out for dinner with a bunch of her old friends from Lowell High instead.

"It's all about the meals, isn't it."

"That's how we entertain ourselves here."

I thought it sounded fun, so a few hours later, after helping her mom prep a bouillabaisse all except for simmering the seafood, we found ourselves hopping out of a cab and meeting up with a bunch of people at a Pakistani restaurant in the Mission district. We ate veggie pakoras and curry and kebabs and naan while Bella caught up on gossip and gave some funny impressions of life in Forks. It was a good time. Bella was wearing a dark blue mohair sweater I hadn't seen before, and I decided dark blue was my favorite color on her because it made such a pretty contrast with her cream-and-strawberries skin, but also brought out the warmth in her brown eyes, whereas black made them look darker. I was aware that I was eyeing her over dinner like a starving man eyeing a steak, but it had been two weeks since I had seen her, for God's sake.

Her friends were going on to a New Year's party after dinner, and invited us along, but by then we were dying to be alone and figured we'd have the best luck with that if we headed home.

The Mission was a lively, somewhat grungy neighborhood teeming with hipsters. We were keeping an eye out for a cab, and Bella had us walking in the general direction that we wanted to go. The streets were full of people, many of them spilling out of bars and nightclubs, some fairly drunk. As we walked up the street we passed a girl with long, wavy red hair who was sitting on the sidewalk, swearing like a sailor. We both glanced at her as we walked by, as I was in the midst of telling Bella a funny story about the time some friends of Emmett's had tried to teach Rosalie to waterski. We came to a red light and as we stood at the curb waiting we heard a girl yelling and ranting behind us. Bella looked back. "It's that red-haired girl," she said. She looked back again. "Um…I think she's yelling at _me."_

I turned around just as the girl came within a couple of feet of us. "You bitch! What are you looking at! Hey, I'm talking to you!" She was glaring at Bella, who gave me a half-amused, half-worried look.

"Hey, now," I said soothingly to the girl. "We're not looking at you. We're just walking down the street here. Happy New Year."

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to her. What are you looking at, you bitch?" She took another step towards Bella and I put my hand on her shoulder. She suddenly grabbed my jacket collar and started yelling at me,

"What are you gonna do, mister big guy? Are you gonna hit me? What are you gonna do, big man?" This was not good. She wasn't even as tall as Bella, maybe five foot two, and she was sort of dangling off my collar and yelling things that were making everyone on the street start to look hard at us.

"Hey, there's a taxi!" Bella sprang into the intersection just as the light changed and ran up to the cab to claim it. She opened the back door. "Come on, Edward!"

I managed to free my collar from the grip of the redhead, who was hissing and spitting. Why was I always getting into these messes? Once Bella saw me sprinting toward the cab, she slid into the backseat and I slid in after her. Before I could pull the door shut, however, the girl slid into the backseat as well. The three of us stared at each other, and then Bella gave the driver our address. The girl countered with her address. The turbaned driver just sat there, glaring at us in the rearview mirror and saying in an exasperated tone, "Where you want to go first?" The girl shouted her address again. I turned to her.

"I tell you what. We'll give you this cab. You take it." Bella opened her door and climbed out, and I followed. I tried to close the door, but the girl pushed it open with her foot and jumped out as well, slamming the door behind her. Before we could do anything else, the empty cab sped away.

"Goddamn it!" I moaned. We tried walking up the street again, but Little Red was right behind us, shouting at Bella again. If it were a guy it would have been easier to deal with—as it was, it was hard for me to figure out what to do. Suddenly Bella spun around and confronted the girl.

"Get away from us," she growled. The girl shoved her, and Bella shoved her back, hard. The girl teetered as if she might fall. This was not good.

"Come on," I said, grabbing Bella's hand and ducking into the nearest bar. I asked the bouncer if he could give us a hand eluding a crazed harpy, pointing her out, and he chuckled. "Don't worry, I'll take care of it." He positioned himself outside the door and when the girl tried to follow us into the bar he turned her away. He had to pick her up physically three times, arms and legs flailing, and set her down on the sidewalk before she finally gave up and wandered away.

After a few minutes Bella and I thanked him and left the bar, continuing up towards Market Street and keeping an eye out for a cab. We saw a lot of occupied cabs, but no empty ones, and started to notice people on every corner who were also trying to hail one. Bella suggested we keep walking toward the Castro, as there were bound to be lots of cabs over there, she said. When we got over there, there were if anything more people spilling out of more bars and more nightclubs and standing on corners trying in vain to hail a cab.

"Can we just walk home?" I asked her.

"No, there's a kind of bad neighborhood between here and home. Not good to walk through this time of night."

"How about the bus?"

"If we could get on one, but there aren't that many running on the holiday schedule and I saw a couple that were all full of people and just skipping the stops."

We parked ourselves on a street corner with a small crowd of taxi seekers. All four corners seemed to be full of people waiting around. I managed to get a fire hydrant to sit on, and I leaned Bella up against me with her back against my chest. I looked at my watch.

"We may be spending midnight right here on this corner," I told her.

She leaned her head back and turned her face up to look at me.

"I don't mind. I'm just glad you're here." I leaned her back and kissed her, cradling her in my arms as if I were dipping her in a tango. People on our corner started getting chummy, and someone popped open a bottle of champagne and passed around little plastic champagne saucers. It was becoming a festive little scene. Electronic club music was pulsing out of an open doorway a few shopfronts down, and men with handlebar moustaches and lumberjack shirts were strolling up the street arm in arm. We all did a New Year's Eve countdown, with a lot of hooting and noisemakers at the stroke of midnight. Bella turned to put her arms around my neck and we kissed and kissed.

A few minutes later, a van pulled up alongside our corner. It was an airport SuperShuttle. The side door rolled open, and a guy wearing a dark beanie popped his head out and announced that we all could get a ride anywhere we liked for twenty bucks a head. All the folks on our corner looked at each other, and we all piled in. At first I thought it was a couple of SuperShuttle drivers making a little extra cash on the side, but once I got a better look at them, they seemed kind of young and not dressed at all like SuperShuttle drivers. They seemed well organized, however. One of them was writing our destinations on a clipboard and programming the GPS.

"Do you think this is a stolen SuperShuttle?" I whispered to Bella. She looked me and then at the driver, who was also wearing a beanie and looked to be about our age.

"Hm. That's a good question." I felt a little tense all the way home, but we were one of the first drop-offs and there didn't seem to be any funny business. I handed the guy forty dollars and we jumped out of the van, which sped away. For what should have been an eight-dollar cab ride, forty dollars had come to seem like an excellent bargain.

"That was insane."

As we came up the front stairs, Bella's mother was just saying goodnight to the last of her guests. She sat with us in the front room and we told her our evening's adventures, and she laughed about it as if it were the funniest thing she had ever heard. She poured us each a little glass of bubbly and we had our own New Year's toast. After a while, she headed upstairs for bed. "Don't stay up too late, kids," she said, winking at us.

"'Night, mom," Bella smiled at her. "Happy New Year," I called after her. Bella and I settled down together on the couch, but I really had to pee so I told her I'd be right back. When I came back she was leaning on the side cushion, sound asleep. I smiled ruefully at the sight, then stretched myself out on the couch and pulled her down to snooze alongside me.

_**Author's Note: Poor Edward, cockblocked by Victoria and by San Francisco's notorious lack of cabs.**_


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter 34**, _**in which Bella tries to "distract" Edward**_

The next morning I was awoken by the sound of a throat being cleared, and groggily got one eye open to see Bella's mom standing over us. I made a little strangled sound and started up, waking up Bella, but then realized that we were lying side-by-side on the couch, fully clothed, and actually this didn't look all that bad. Renée didn't seem perturbed by it because she grinned at us and said,

"Sorry to wake you but I am starving…want to go get some brekkie?"

She wasn't even in Perth yet but she was sounding like an Australian already, with her pet name for breakfast.

So we pulled ourselves together and went out for brekkie, at a place called the Warming Hut on a pretty beach called Crissy Field, and then sat on the beach for ages, admiring the astonishing close-up view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a sunny, clear but cold day, and about a zillion people were out riding bikes and running along a path that ran parallel to the beach. There were also a lot of kites flying farther down past the beach on a grassy lawn area and sailboats on the bay. Afterwards, we walked around Chestnut Street and poked into a lot of shops. I encouraged Bella to buy a dress, and I bought her a new pair of sunglasses.

At the end of the afternoon, Bella's mom was off to drive up to Bolinas, an artists' colony fifty minutes north of San Francisco, to visit friends.

"Is it OK with you kids if I take the car?" she asked worriedly.

"Of course," said Bella. "We can just walk down to Union Street from here." Union Street is in the Marina, she told me, where good Greeks go when they graduate.

After she left, Bella asked me if I wanted to go grab a bite.

I gave her a crooked smile. "Don't you want to strike while the iron is hot?" I didn't want to have her mom walking in on us fooling around when she arrived home.

Bella said her mom was going to end up staying up in Bolinas overnight. "She always does. They'll be toking up all evening. She'll be texting me about 9 p.m. to say she'll be staying over."

"Doesn't she worry about leaving you alone here overnight with me?"

"Oh no, she _loves _you. All day she's been telling me how adorable you are. Plus, I've told her you're kind of old-fashioned and we're taking it slow…she just loved that."

"Well, it's not untrue, is it?" While I had previously thought things were going kind of fast, now I was starting to wonder what we were waiting for. She just smiled coyly at me.

We went out to grab a bite, and, since it was early and there was no hurry we saw a movie as well. It was a romantic comedy, typically not my favorite genre, but it was British and actually kind of funny.

As we walked back to the house, Bella got the text from her mom and so I started kissing her on the way up the front steps and did not stop while she struggled to unlock the door and while we took our jackets and shoes off in the front hall. On the way to her room I pushed her against the wall and kissed her some more, and took her shirt off. We fell down onto the bed with her unbuttoning my jeans, and we kept tonguing and fondling each other, occasionally stopping just long enough to frantically remove another article of the other's clothing. As soon as I had her stripped naked I tried that thing with my cock placed between her legs, but once again had to stop because it was too exciting.

Bella, however, apparently did _not _think it was too exciting because she took hold of me and placed me back between her legs, and began rubbing against me even more enthusiastically than before. We were lying side by side and everything was getting slippery and when she raised one thigh and the tip of my cock actually slid inside her, she pushed down to bring it a little deeper inside. I groaned and pulled out, but a moment later I rolled on top of her and tried it again, just letting the tip slide in. So deliciously warm and wet and tight around me, enveloping me. I pulled back out and lay on top of her, both of us panting.

"Bella, we can't do this. It isn't safe. I don't think I can control myself."

She hummed an "mmm" in a slightly begging tone. I pushed inside her again, pushing just a little deeper, and then pulled out.

"Do you want me to get a condom?" I whispered. "Because I have some in my bag. I'll go get one right now." Emmett hadn't been kidding about that drawer.

I added, "I don't want to push you if you're not ready, but frankly, Bella, you seem kind of ready."

"Did I ever tell you about my friend Carrie…" and Bella launched in to some story about her friend whose guy's condom broke and the big scare they had and plus you know some people are allergic to latex, can you imagine. She was talking fast…when had I heard her do this before? The hearts game. The Strawberry Bay dig. This was her "tell"; she was trying to _distract_ me from something.

"Bella, is there something you're not telling me?" My heart kind of froze.

She looked at me blankly, and then grinned.

"Ach, I'm such a loser, I wanted it to be a surprise."

"What?"

"This week, I…well, I…"

"What?"

"I went to the doctor and got the ring."

"The ring?" Visions of gold wedding bands danced through my head.

"The birth control ring."

"Oh!"

"But you have to wait to make sure it takes effect properly."

"How long?"

"A week. So, like, next weekend."

I kissed her gently, enraptured.

"We can wait…" I told her. "Or if you don't want to wait I can still go get a condom."

She shook her head. "No, we should wait."

I blew out my breath in a huff, telling myself to swallow my disappointment and fast, but before I could stop myself, I asked, petulantly, "Why?"

"I want all of you."

"What do you mean?"

"I want you to come inside me when we do it."

Hearing her say this turned me on so badly that I moaned. Just once more, I thought, and shifted to slip inside her again. So, so good. _So_ warm, _so _wet, _so _tight. I thrust in a little more. "Mmf," she complained. Oops. Maybe that was deeper than I thought. _What was I doing? _I pulled out and hovered over her.

"OK. This is killing me," I whispered.

She reached down and wrapped her hand around me, starting to move it the way I had showed her. My dick was so wet with her wetness that her hand slipped easily over the head and back down the shaft.

"Come on me," she urged.

"What?"

She giggled. "Since you can't come _in _me—_yet—_come _on _me."

"Fuck, Bella," I said, and then spurted cum all over her belly. She hummed.

"Sorry, that was a lot," I said, flopping down next to her. She traced a lazy circle on her belly with her fingertips.

I felt around on the floor for my t-shirt. "Please," I said, offering it to her.

She took it and wiped herself.

"You're always such a gentleman. I love that about you."

I laughed at this. "You have very low standards," I responded. She laughed at that.

"Were you…saving yourself for me these last couple of weeks?" she asked, referring to my comment about the quantity.

"Hell no."

"Oh?" she asked, and started sucking on my neck, one thigh flung over mine. She stopped long enough to ask, "So what did you _think_ about?"

She liked for me to talk to her about that.

"Well, I like to imagine I'm sneaking into your room late at night…"

"Wow, how do you get in there?" she asked. She was squeezing my thigh between both of hers.

"That conveniently placed trellis…or maybe the chimney has some bricks sticking out of it, I don't know."

"If only. But anyway, you're sneaking into my room…"

"Right, and I slip under your covers with you and touch you through your nightgown…"

"Is it silky?" she asked, pressing her hips against me.

"Oh yes, of course it is. I like the way your titties feel through it." I fondled them as told her this. "Then I pull up your nightgown and you're so wet, I just can't stop myself and I just take you then and there, even with Charlie sleeping right in the other room…actually, I like the thought of…fucking you…right under his nose." I wasn't totally sure if I should use the f-word like that with her, but I had noticed she seemed to like it when I swore when I was coming, so I had an inkling she wouldn't take it amiss. She didn't. She found my mouth and kissed me deeply. I slipped my fingers between her legs, feeling her wetness, and whispered,

"What's your pleasure?"

"Tongue," she answered quickly.

I scooched myself down and she spread her legs for me. I had another idea in my head, and I tongue-fucked her this time, which made _her_ cuss, and then I licked and sucked her up higher until she came, bucking her hips and crying out loudly without having to worry about anyone hearing her.

"Jesus Christ, Edward, how are you so good at that?" she panted afterward, as I wiped my chin on her thigh.

"You inspire me. In lewd ways."

I crawled up the bed and put my head next to hers on the pillows. I pulled her close, making her turn away from me, and spooned her. "Are you sleepy?" I asked, kissing her hair.

"Mm." She sounded sleepy. And content.

"OK, go to sleep, but I'm going to wake you up again before long."


	35. Chapter 35

**Chapter 35**_**, in which not much happens**_

The next morning at around six Bella's phone beeped. It was her mom:

_-B what time is E's appt at Stanfurd? I am heading back._

"Shit!" she exclaimed. "What does this mean? She's about to head back, or she is already on her way?"

She texted her back to say not to hurry, it wasn't till ten-thirty. But we figured we'd better get up and take showers. Separate showers. I had had designs on taking a shower together, but I guessed that was out.

Renée showed back up at seven-thirty. Bella was in the kitchen making coffee, and as I came down the hallway to say hello I found Bella's shirt on the floor and aimed it into her bedroom.

"Sorry for the change of plans last night. But, I'm sure you didn't mind." She winked at us. This time I felt _my_ face getting hot. Renée asked us how our evening had been, and Bella launched into an extremely detailed account of the plot of the movie we had seen, while I made scrambled eggs with tomato and green onions, and toasted some English muffins.

Bella must not have been joking about her mom's driving skills, because Renée asked Bella to do the driving down to Stanford. I had told them I would be happy to rent a car and not drag them with me, but Renée said nonsense, and that there was a yoga studio in Palo Alto they had heard was great and then they could find plenty of shops to look at on University Avenue. So we piled into the car with their sticky mats, and Renée insisted on sitting in back because "her legs were a lot shorter than mine."

They dropped me off, and I met up first with the track coach, who took me around the sports facility, and then handed me off to one of the student tour leaders for a regular school tour. I found myself really liking the peaceful, bucolic vibe of the beautiful palm tree–dotted campus and came away feeling pretty impressed by the whole experience. Maybe I _had_ been thinking too rigidly. Stanford is always ranked among the top ten American colleges by _News & World Report, _if not in the top five, after all. _I should definitely apply at least._

Bella was coming back to Forks the next day, but once my school tour had been set for Monday I had had a little trouble justifying staying an extra day, plus I figured her mom wanted a bit more alone time with her. So after we stopped for lunch, they drove me to the airport.

On the way to the airport, Muse's _Supermassive Black Hole _came on the radio.

Bella turned up the radio—"Who is this? I love this one"—and sang along:

_Oo, baby don't you yell on my cellphone  
Oo, baby can you hear me now?_

"Bella, those aren't the words," I said in a stage whisper.

"No?"

"No."

A pause. "OK, what is she saying, then?"

"It's not a she, it's a he."

"Really?"

"Really. He's singing all high-pitched…like a girl."

"Huh."

She was ridiculous. What was I going to do without her for another thirty-six hours in Forks?


	36. Chapter 36

**Chapter 36, **_**in which a whole heck of a lot happens**_

Bella was back in school on Wednesday. At lunch, she told me that Charlie was going to be working the night shift the next night and that I should come spend the evening with her. At dinner on Thursday I told my parents I was going out to the movies in Port Townsend with some guys from track.

When Bella opened the door, I put both arms around her waist and kissed her.

She pulled me inside and closed the door. "Can you _try _to act discreet? I've got neighbors, you know."

I got hold of her again and, leaning my back against the door and pulling her close, began kissing her again. She made some happy little sounds, then came up for air and asked me, superciliously, what exactly I thought she had asked me over for.

"Oh, right, sorry," I said, then threw her over my shoulder and carried her upstairs amid a lot of shrieking.

"Oh my God, don't you dare drop me down these stairs."

"Stop struggling so much."

I ducked into her room, managing not to hit her head on the doorframe, shut and then locked the door for good measure, and turned the light off. She had strings of Christmas lights all around her room that gave it a mellow glow. I dropped her unceremoniously on the bed, where she lay giggling, and flopped down next to her. I noticed her Shuffle docked in her clock radio and I picked out an album. Then I rolled back over to hover over her and kissed her again, and slipped my hand under her shirt to caress her waist.

"Undress for me," I requested.

"Neanderthal." She smiled and got up on her knees. She unbuttoned her dark blue button-down blouse, letting it fall to the floor. She was wearing a little pink cotton bra underneath that was stitched to make her breasts look just a little pointy, in a retro way.

"Nice," I commented. "Is that new?"

"Yes. Nana Higgenbotham always takes me out to have tea and buy me nice underwear when she comes visit. She says it helps a girl face the world."

I laughed at this. "Tell her thank you from me."

"I think not."

She continued undressing, standing up next to the bed to step out of her cords. I was pulling off my clothes as I watched her. There was a little bow on the front of her panties. I pulled her toward me and kissed it. I helped her pull her panties down to step of them, and once I had my underpants off she sat herself down on my lap, straddling me. I pushed my hips up against her as I felt her up, then reached around to unclasp her bra and fling that out of the way. I could never get used to how pretty her breasts were, and leaned my head down to kiss them.

Soon we were scooching up on the bed so that I could lie back and she could lie on top of me, holding herself up with her arms and letting her hair fall over and tickle my chest. She was frotting against me as I sucked on her nipples, when suddenly she had one leg on either side of me and was slipping herself over my cock so I was inside her again, just like Sunday night. I groaned and pushed just a little deeper, once, twice. How good would it feel to just explode inside her. I could feel my balls tighten up, and I pulled out.

"You can keep going," she whispered.

I took a deep breath, trying to bring myself back from the brink. "Swan, are you _trying _to become a teenage mother, because we have talked about trying to improve this loser mentality of yours."

She giggled. "Cullen, you are ruining the mood. I am telling you that you can keep going. It's been one week."

_What? _"I thought you said this weekend."

"I was rounding up."

"So you're saying…you mean…"

"I want you to make me not a virgin anymore. I want you to _change _me."

My body moved of its own volition, rolling us over—no easy feat on this narrow bed of hers—and gently pushing apart her knees with my knee.

I put my head close to her ear and told her that I wanted her to be mine. She said that she _was_ mine. I said no not yet but I was going to make her mine. She raised her hips up, finding and wetting the tip of my cock. Mastering an urge to bury myself in her up to the hilt in one strong thrust, I slowly moved my own hips to stroke her with my tip, from her clit all the way down to her entrance, then slipped just the head of my cock inside her. I pushed deeper and pulled back, and again, trying to figure out where her hymen was. The tight slippery warmth of her was so fucking exciting to me that I that I wondered whether I shouldn't let myself come once and _then_ try this because I was so close already. The way things were headed, this was going to be over embarrassingly quickly, even taking into consideration that I was an extremely excited seventeen-year-old guy making it with his extremely willing girlfriend for the first time. I was also wondering if I shouldn't make her come beforehand.

So I pulled out and began to stroke her clit with the tip of my cock. She moaned and whimpered, her eyes closed and body in an attitude of complete abandonment, arms flung out to either side and legs spread wide. She gave little pushes of her hips to meet me each time I slid over her sweet spot. It was getting so slippery that she moved her hand to keep me in place and stop me from sliding too far up. I slid back inside her, just with my tip, a couple of times, but mostly concentrated on caressing her _there, _and before long she used her fingertips to hold me right there as she came, shaking, and crying out my name. This made me come at once, spurting onto her fingers and her sex. I was starting to like that business as much as she seemed to.

I slid down and put my full weight on top of her. The Elliott Smith album we were listening to had looped around again. "What song is this?" she asked me.

"'Twilight.'"

We rolled around a little, kissing and telling each other we loved each other, and I felt so excited that in short order I was hard again. I couldn't wait any more. I came back up on top of her and pushed her knees open again.

"I'm sorry if this hurts," I whispered, and pushed myself inside her, in and out, slow and steady. When she sucked in a breath, I stopped moving, but she took a deep breath and said not to stop.

"Do you want this fast or slow?" I asked her.

"Fast."

I stroked her thigh, which I could feel was tensed. "Try to relax," I whispered.

"OK."

I gave a couple of harder thrusts, which was a relief to me but made her complain softly, and then found myself completely sheathed in her. And it felt so good, I felt so close to her, such a rush of love for her, I just wanted to stay right here forever. But I also felt like I was about to explode.

"Mm, Bella," I whispered. "I can't hold off."

"Then don't," she smiled, biting her lip and pushing her hips up to bring me deeper. I thrust a little harder again, just a few times, and then my balls and stomach tightened up and I came with violent jolts of pleasure that made me cry out and actually see stars behind my screwed-up eyelids. I stayed inside her as long as I could, then pulled out and lay next to her, holding her close.

"Did that hurt?" I asked.

"Um…yes."

I kissed her cheek. "I'm sorry. It'll get better, I promise."

"Did you like it?"

"Um…it was fucking great for me." I grinned at her, and she sighed happily.

"I love you more than anything," I told her.

We lay there in a sort of a trance for a while, and then she woke me up by kissing my chest.

"When's your curfew?" she asked.

I looked at her clock. "An hour and a half ago."

"You'd better go."

"I don't want to go. I want to stay here with you all night."

I began kissing her again and touching her everywhere, until we were both breathing heavily.

"Can we try it again?" I asked. She nodded and I came back on top of her and slid myself in. She was plenty wet, not only from being excited but from my having come inside her not half an hour ago, but she was deliciously tight and I had to thrust as gently as I could several times to sheath myself inside her. This was my new favorite place in the world to be. She was making gingerly movements with her hips to meet my thrusts, and once I was inside her all the way she sighed and seemed to relax, but once I started moving again she tensed up.

"Mm, that hurts. I don't think I can."

I pulled out. "That's OK," I said, stroking and kissing her cheeks.

"Do you want me to…"

"No, it's fine. Don't worry about me." It wasn't like she owed me an orgasm, especially when she clearly wasn't getting one. I cupped her down there with my hand. "I'm sorry I hurt you."

We lay close, cuddling and whispering together, until I saw that it was nearly 1:30 and I really did have to go.

As I got up I noticed a smear of blood on the sheet.

"Oh, ah, is that…"

"Oh, I'll have to wash the sheets."

"Will Charlie notice…"

She smiled. "He has nothing to do with washing my sheets."

She added, "I don't want to wash them now that they smell like you."

# # #

I tried to be ultra quiet coming home, but as I came upstairs I bumped into Esmé in her bathrobe, squinting.

"What time is it?" she asked.

_One forty-five_. "Kind of late, sorry. Uh, we decided to stay for a midnight showing…_Blade Runner_…sorry, I lost track of time."

"OK. But this is late for a school night. And next time, call."

"OK, sorry, Ma."

I went upstairs, pulled off my clothes, and climbed into my bed naked. This sucked. It seemed _ridiculous_ that I had to leave her. I just wanted her to be with me, every night, so I could hold her and love her. I thought about marriage, again. Well, we _were _married now, in a sense, in the most primal, basic sense. I wondered if she thought about it that way too.


	37. Chapter 37

**Chapter 37, **_**in which Edward and Bella give their best impression of crazed rabbits**_

The next day at school I discovered that I could make Bella start giggling and turning pink just by looking at her, which was pretty fucking cute.

After Biology I leaned against the lockers next to hers while she swapped books in and out.

"When can I come over again? Or, why don't you come over this weekend. Alice can have you sleep over…"

"I can't. Charlie planned all this quality-time stuff for this weekend since I was away over Christmas."

"What about tonight?"

"I don't think I can. Some folks are coming over for dinner. Sue Clearwater…and Billy." She glanced at me.

"Billy….Black?" _Fuck. I have to tell her about that business with Jacob._

She nodded. "I don't know if Jacob's coming. I kind of think not, because I haven't heard he is." From Bella's perspective there hadn't seemed to be any ramifications from that run-in at the theater, but I hated to think what might happen if Jacob came over to her house and got in a quarrel with Bella about it.

I sighed. "I forgot to tell you…" _Riiight._ "I ran into Jacob."

"_What?"_

"Come on, let's sit outside today for lunch and I'll tell you." That would give me a few minutes to figure out what I was going to say, exactly. And also some privacy, since it was lightly drizzling and no one in his right mind was sitting outside. There were a couple of lunch tables under an awning, however, so we sat there bundled up in our raincoats and I gave her an edited version of my conversations with Jacob and then with Carlisle. I skipped the part about Carlisle's considering the possibility of our leaving Forks. No point in getting her all freaked out if that turned out to be idle horrifying speculation. Plus, Bella was already plenty riled up about the Jacob thing.

"I cannot fucking believe this. He is totally out of control. I am going to call him right now." She got up and stalked away, phone in hand.

"Bella, I don't know if that's a good idea…" She ignored me and started pacing a few yards away from me, phone to ear, and apparently got his voicemail because she just said a few words into the phone and angrily punched a button to hang up.

At the end of school I tried again to persuade her to spend the night out, and she said she couldn't, but that Jacob was not responding to her and she got the feeling he was not coming over to her house. As it turned out, he didn't show that night, nor did he call her back, though she said she left a number of messages over the weekend, voice and text.

Meanwhile, I was climbing the walls all weekend while she went fishing with Charlie on Saturday and spent Sunday in Seattle with him reliving some of their favorite activities from when she was younger—doing the underground tour of Pioneer Square and checking out the spawning salmon at the Ballard locks. She was texting me surreptitious updates all day. Now she was e-mailing me a picture of herself in front of the Ballard troll.

_-is he going to make u ride the ducks,_ I texted her in response.

_-god I hope not it is pouring down rain_

_-that's perfect cuz tmrw morn u r going to wake up w a sore throat *w*_

_-k_

_-pls delete_

The next morning instead of going to school I drove over to Bella's and parked down the street. We spent the entire day in her room, trying out different positions, just breaking for ham-and-pickle sandwiches at lunchtime. We did it with her on top, and then with me on top, and then side by side with me behind her, and then her sitting on top again because that way gave me really great visuals. She had recovered from the other night, obviously, but by the end of the day she was complaining that I was making her sore again.

Over the next couple of weeks I spent some time pondering the fact that I had this visceral, almost animal, physical reaction to Bella that I hadn't ever experienced with any other girl I'd found physically attractive. Unsurprisingly—since it had distinguished itself as a theme in the fantasies I had been entertaining all fall—I found I especially liked to take her from behind, either with her lying flat on the bed and me on top of her, or with her on all fours, a couple of times with me standing on the floor behind her on the couch, which felt particularly naughty, let me get so deep, and always made me come really hard. I didn't delve too far into the psychology behind that one. Bella continued to get especially turned on by my cum and would still sometimes urge me to come on her, which since she was good with I certainly had no objections to, but mostly she liked for me to come inside her, which seemed to give her some deep feeling of satisfaction that we also did not delve into.

Since there were always so many people at my house, the only way to hope for being alone was to go to her house after school, but between my practice and her library volunteering and the possibility some days that Charlie might arrive home around four this was not panning out very well. Bella's devious brain was working overtime, though, and she hit on a scheme whereby I could come visit her at night. She told Charlie that she wanted to paint her room, moved her essentials downstairs into the guest room, pushed all her furniture into the center of her bedroom and covered it with a drop cloth, and proceeded to start bringing home endless paint samples from the hardware store, painting swatches on the walls and then changing her mind. (She told me she was drawing inspiration from Odysseus' wife, Penelope.) This way she spent some weeks in a ground-floor room, the farthest possible point in the house from Charlie's upstairs bedroom, and where I could just climb in through a window that faced the backyard.

We both found the furtiveness of it, the fact that Charlie was usually in the house, extremely exciting, like when things seem especially funny because you're in church or class and you're not supposed to laugh and you're suppressing it. On those nights I would sneak out of my house and sneak into her bed and would tease her, work her up to the point where she could not be any more wet and was rubbing her thighs together and begging for it, and then we would fuck so hard the box springs would squeak or sometimes the bedframe would even thump the wall and she would be so far gone she wouldn't even tell me to keep it down.

We had a close call one time when Charlie woke up and heard something, and light from the stairway spilled under her door, making me spring up and duck into the closet, and then he knocked on her door. He poked his head in the room and asked Bella if she hadn't just heard something banging. She propped herself up on her elbows, squinting at the light from the hallway, and said she thought there had been a little earthquake, she thought she felt her bed shaking but was not sure if she had been dreaming. I had to cover my mouth with my hand and breath deeply to avoid busting up. Luckily I had not bothered taking Bella's t-shirt off her that time, but I'm sure she would have come up with a logical explanation for that if Charlie had noticed she was naked. After he did leave, I found that my boxers were lying on the floor in plain sight, but he had not noticed them. After that I was careful to always throw my clothes on the side of the bed closer to the window than the door.

I guess she felt bad about going behind her dad's back so much, or maybe she just liked to court danger, because she asked me to come pick her up one afternoon when he was home, reintroducing me as Edward but not reiterating the Alice's brother part _or _specifying that I was her Biology class lab partner _or_ her English class small group partner, and telling him we were going to the library to work on a project together. We _were_ actually going to the library to work on an English presentation about loyalty, betrayal, and the tales of Lancelot and Tristan in Malory's _Morte d'Arthur. _I gave her a ride on the back of Alice's scooter, because I figured better not to give Charlie a gratuitous gander at my car.

On the painting-the-room front, eventually Charlie put his foot down and made her pick a color because his sister was coming to visit from New Hampshire. Bella painted her room periwinkle blue and moved back upstairs, and then my nighttime visits became more erratic because it was much harder to get into her room, though we managed it occasionally using her fire ladder, which was nylon except for the metal top that fit over the windowsill and therefore did not clank too much.

With each day that passed, with each time that we made love, I wanted more. I could not get enough of Bella Swan.

_**Author's Note: Wassamatter, cat's got your tongue? Please review! We are running out of chapters, people!**_


	38. Chapter 38

**Chapter 38, **_**in which OK we are back to the shit hitting the fan**_

The third weekend of January and Carlisle's meeting with the Quileute tribe were fast approaching, but for this last little stretch of time he had seemed in fine spirits and hadn't said anything further about it, plus it had begun to seem far-fetched that Jacob Black could really scuttle the dig based on his friends seeing me and Bella walking around the site, so I made like an ostrich and said nothing.

The Friday night before the Saturday meeting, Alice and Bella came into the living room where I was sitting with Esmé, me fooling around on my guitar and Esmé crocheting a sweater, and draped themselves over the couch. "Is it OK if Bella sleeps over?" Alice asked, and Esmé said of course. I began playing "Please Please Me_._" Bella blushed and bit her lip to keep from laughing. I looked at her levelly and mouthed, "What?" Out of the corner of my eye I saw Esmé looking at me, and I dropped my eyes down.

"OK," said Alice, standing up. "We're going to the movies in Port Angeles."

I glanced at Esmé, who was studying her handiwork, glared at Alice, and mouthed, "What the fuck?"

Alice looked at me coolly and said loudly, "So, Edward, no date on a Friday night? A handsome boy like you? You're welcome to come with us if you don't mind watching a chick flick with your big sister and boring old Bella."

I snorted. "Nothing big about you 'cept your mouth."

I pursed my lips and added, "No, Alice, thanks for asking but I think I'll just stay here and play Ping-Pong with Jasper tonight."

"You guys have a Ping-Pong table?" Bella asked.

"Yes, in the garage. Would you like to see it?"

"We're late," said Alice, grabbing Bella's jacket and dragging her out of the room. I glanced at Esmé, who was looking at me again, then put my guitar down and went looking for Jasper.

# # #

The next day, Carlisle came home from his meeting and went straight up to his study, shutting himself in with Esmé for a half-hour before calling downstairs, where I was lying on the couch reading, or trying to:

"Edward, come up here please."

This was bad. I slowly walked upstairs and into his study, shutting the door on his request and coming to stand in front of his desk.

"Edward, I hardly know what to say."

He shook his head as if he couldn't believe it.

"I think you are fully aware what a sensitive issue this dig is for the Quileute tribe. They are extremely disappointed, and rightfully so, that a member of my own family would behave in a disrespectful way, entering this restricted area, which they consider sacred, as some kind of...teenage lark."

I remained silent. He continued.

"You showed poor judgment going down there alone, without me. And bringing Bella. I don't understand what you were doing down there. If you were curious about anything why not ask me. You know I'd be happy to show you anytime."

I wasn't sure what to say. "Well, I wanted to show Bella," I said, lamely.

"I'd be happy to show Bella. She's like one of the family. I don't understand…"

"Carlisle," Esmé said, giving him a look. "Edward, are you sweet on Bella?" she asked softly.

I couldn't help but smile at her old-fashionedness. Carlisle looked at me sharply.

"I don't know about this, Edward. I'm not sure what the exact situation is, but Mr. Black _did_ seem particularly concerned about the fact that you were taking _Bella _down there. She's a close friend of their family, of the tribe. And a close friend of our family as well. I just don't think it's a good idea for you to be…_seeing_ her. It muddies the waters."

"I can't stop _seeing _her. I'm in love with her." This sort of tumbled out of my mouth of its own accord.

He stared at me, obviously flabbergasted. "How long has this been going on?" he demanded.

I paused. "A while."

He ran his hands through his hair. "Are you intimate with this girl?"

I didn't answer.

"Edward, I asked you a question. Are you sleeping with this girl?"

Some smart-alecky response about how we were doing a lot of things together, but not much _sleeping,_ flashed through my head. Finally I simply nodded.

"Oh god," he moaned, rubbing his eyes with his palms. Esmé put one finger over her lips, as if she were shushing herself. She looked at him.

"Edward, this puts us in a very awkward position. Think about it. Her father is a small-town policeman. She's been sleeping at our house, coming on trips...as Alice's friend…and all the while our son is schtupping her?" He was starting to raise his voice. I thought about explaining that I hadn't been actually _schtupping _her the whole while, only recently, but decided it was best to remain silent. He continued. "It's a breach of trust. What would her father think about this? Is he aware of your relationship?"

I shook my head.

"This is a small town, people are old-fashioned, and he's the _police _chief. Don't you realize, he could have you hauled up on statutory rape charges if he didn't like this, which I'm sure he would not, if he knew about it."

"Oh come on, Bella is seventeen and a half…" _Well, almost. September, October, November…_

"Nevertheless, she is technically a minor. And in the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter that you are one as well."

Carlisle stood up. "I'm sorely disappointed in the lack of judgment you have been showing in this entire matter. I need to decide what to do about this."

Esmé interrupted. "Carlisle, you can't keep them _apart._"

He waved her off. "No more sleepovers. No more trips. I have enough to worry about with this re-negotiation with the Quileute elders without having to worry about what illicit affairs are going on under this roof."

_Really? Was he _blind? I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

As if to underscore his point, Bella had come into my room the night before. After her especially authentic-looking show of innocent friendship, hanging out with Alice all evening, she had ostensibly gone to bed in Alice's room. When everyone was asleep, including me, she snuck down the hall and stripped naked before sliding into my bed. I woke up, instantly aroused, and quickly found myself in a game of Cad Seducing Innocent, which was one of our favorite games and went something like this:

"What _is_ that?"

(That was my cock against her thigh.)

"This? This belongs to you."

(Moving myself up higher to brush her sex with it.)

"To me?"

"Yes, doesn't that feel nice? Should I put it where it belongs?"

"Mm, where does it belong?"

(Putting the tip at her entrance.)

"Right here."

"Oh no, I shouldn't. I'm a virgin."

(She liked to play reluctant.)

"Oh that's all right. I'll just put it in a little bit."

"I'm not sure."

"Let me show you."

(Putting in the tip.)

"Oh that does feel nice."

"Do you like it? Let me put it in more."

"Just a little."

"How do you like this?"

"That feels good."

(Deeper.)

"Mm."

"Yes, that feels very good. Let me come in a little more."

"Oh, I shouldn't."

"Oh, but it feels so nice, I don't think I can stop."

"Mm, but, oh, I thought you said just the tip."

"Did I?"

"Yes, remember, I'm a virgin."

"Not any more."

(Thrusting in all the way, which made Bella groan.)

"Oh, you are so _big, _you are filling me up."

"There's another way I can fill you up, would you like to find out?"

"Oh, what do you mean?"

(I slipped my hand down to touch her _there _with my thumb and thrusted hard until I came, pouring myself into her, and she came as soon as she felt me throbbing.)

She hadn't stayed long afterward. When she went to get up I asked her where she was going and she said back to Alice's room, she was feeling a little skittish.

"By the way, you need to rein it in, Cullen. You're getting _obvious._"

"OK. Thanks for the booty call."

"Shut up," she had said, waggling her bottom at me before slipping back into her nightclothes.

_Focus, Edward. _Carlisle was saying, "And, not to mention, you could have told me about it before the meeting. Or before this blow-up. I only hear about it because these Quileute boys stumble across you two…"

"They didn't stumble across us, " I said. "They were patrolling."

"Patrolling?" he asked, sharply. "That wasn't the way it was presented in the meeting. This would have been good information to have had," he said, more to Esmé than to me.

Esmé cut in. "Edward, why don't you leave us now and we'll talk things over." She squeezed my hand and gave me a little encouraging smile. I kissed her on the cheek and left the room.

After I closed the door, I heard Carlisle ranting to Esmé about the "underdeveloped frontal lobe in the adolescent human."

_**Coming Soon: Chapter…what are we up to now? 39?**_

_**Enjoy it while it lasts, as Edward said to Bella**_


	39. Chapter 39

**Chapter 39, **_**in which Bella takes action**_

I went into my room and sat on my couch in a pensive funk. After a little while, Carlisle came in to tell me I was on restriction, that for the time being I could go to school and practice but unless I had leave to do otherwise I was to stay at home the rest of the time.

Esmé came in next. She sat down next to me and asked me a couple questions about Bella, but when she saw how reluctant I was to answer, she contented herself with making sure we were being safe. She told me she liked Bella very much. I asked her about the status of the dig, and she said that nothing had been settled definitively, but Carlisle was starting to develop new academic project proposals in case they could not renegotiate the easement.

"Are we going to stay in Forks?"

"Try not to worry about that too much right now. We'll cross that bridge."

This was not a very reassuring answer.

After she left, I knew I had to call Bella and tell her. No use putting it off. She could tell something was wrong as soon as she heard my voice, but she seemed pretty calm about the whole thing until I got to the part about how Carlisle was talking about whether we would remain in Forks. It seemed so far-fetched that we would actually have to move away because of this, but on the other hand it had also seemed far-fetched that Jacob could put a stop the dig.

"But worst-case scenario I think we would be back in Seattle. Carlisle has tenure there, he would just start work on a new research project…I mean, he's not looking to leave this area, the origins of the Northwest tribes are an important focus for him…Seattle's really not that far…" I felt like I was starting to babble. "Bella? Are you there?"

"Yes," she said, squeakily, then had to stop. It sounded like she was trying not to cry.

"Let's not talk about this on the phone. Can I come over tonight? I'll sneak out. What's Charlie's schedule?"

A long pause.

"Not tonight." She seemed calmer. "I have something…I have plans. What about tomorrow?"

"Why not late tonight? After your whatever. What do you have going on?"

"No, tomorrow."

"OK, I'll figure something out."

# # #

That evening, around nine o'clock, I was sitting on the couch downstairs with Emmett, dully watching television, when my cell rang. It was Alice.

"Um…I'm here with Bella. She's hurt her hand. Can you come and pick us up?"

"Where are you? What happened?"

"We're at La Push. I think she needs to go to the emergency room."

"_What?_"

"It's OK, it's just her hand. Maybe it's sprained."

"What happened?"

"Look, I don't know. I mean, you're going to have ask her. Can you come down here? I'm worried about having her ride on the scooter, I don't know if she can hang on properly. "

I glanced at Emmett.

"Of course. Where are you exactly?"

She told me and hung up. I thought about going to Carlisle to ask permission to leave, but I knew he would likely tell me to stay put and go himself to help. I looked at Emmett again. I considered whether I could just leave on my own, but I knew our parents would hear the car on that fucking gravel driveway. Better to have an escort.

"Em, can you go tell Carlisle you're going on a Slurpee run?"

He looked pleased. "Am I going on a Slurpee run?"

"No, but I'll explain in the car."

"OK." One thing that's great about Emmett is that he is always game.

At dinner that night, my parents had told my siblings that there was this issue with the tribe and that the dig was on hold, but did not go into detail. In the car, I told Emmett the rest of the story, omitting just a few sensitive details. He offered to kick Jacob's ass. I told him I'd let him know.

As we pulled into the parking lot at La Push, we spotted the girls right away sitting on a picnic bench next to the lot. As soon as they saw us, they got up and came towards the car. Emmett got out and gave Bella the front seat, helping buckle her in, then said he'd take Alice's scooter home if she liked. She gave him the keys and we both drove off, him towards home (probably stopping at the 7-Eleven on the way) and me towards Forks hospital.

"What happened?" I asked Bella, gesturing for her to show me her right hand, which she was cradling in the other. She held it up. It looked a little swollen.

"I fell."

I looked closely at her, but her face was impassive. "What are you guys doing down here?" I asked.

Her eyes flickered to Alice. She thought for a moment, then said, confessionally, "There's a bonfire here every Saturday. I came down to talk to Jacob. He hasn't been calling me back."

My heart froze.

"What happened to your hand?" I asked her again.

"I tripped."

I frowned. It was possible, I guess, but I didn't like this one bit. "What did Jacob say to you?"

"Nothing. My hand hurts, can we not talk about this right now?"

I huffed loudly but shut my mouth.

When we got to the emergency room, Bella's father was waiting in the lobby.

"Dad," she greeted him. "How did you know…"

"Jacob called me."

Bella turned pale, but collected herself quickly. She glanced at me, then at Alice.

"Dad, you remember Alice of course. And, Edward."

His eyebrows shot up.

"Hello, Alice. Edward," he said slowly, and I got the sense that gears were turning in his head. His brow furrowed. "Were you both with Bella when this happened?"

Bella shook her head almost imperceptibly. I said, "No, sir, she…and Alice…just called me for a ride." OK? I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to say or not say, so I left it at that.

He looked at me for a long moment, then back at Bella. "OK, kiddo, let's get that hand looked at." He ushered her away, calling his thanks to us back over his shoulder for bringing her.

I attempted to grill Alice in the car on the way home, but her position was I had to talk to Bella about it; she wasn't going to get in the middle of it. She said she hadn't seen what had happened; she had walked down to the bonfire with Bella, where they found a surprised Jacob, and Alice had waited at the bonfire while they took a walk. Bella had come storming back not ten minutes later, and told Alice they were leaving, _now, _and did not tell her she was injured until they were back in the parking lot. Jacob had not followed. That was all the information I got.

When Alice and I got home, Carlisle was waiting for me downstairs, livid. He had never been this angry with me. He asked me if I thought this was a joke, and I said no, sir, and he told me to hand over my car keys.


	40. Chapter 40

**Chapter 40, **_**in which Edward gets put under house arrest**_

I handed over my car keys to Carlisle. I went upstairs and shut myself in my room, thinking to call Bella while I was still in possession of my phone, but then wondering if I was supposed to. I had no idea what Jacob might have said to Bella's father; judging by Charlie's thoughtful rather than apoplectic reaction to seeing me, I felt pretty confident he hadn't gotten the whole story of that night at the theater, but there was something about his manner that made me feel he knew _some_thing. And, for all I knew, right now Charlie was holding Bella's bag and phone while she was getting her hand examined. I'm sure I was listed in her phone contacts in some extremely bland and innocuous way, but nonetheless, I hesitated to call her, and texting was definitely out.

Finally, after a fretful hour of pacing my floor worrying about what exactly had happened to Bella and thinking of all the ways I'd like to kick Jacob Black's ass, my brain started working again and I went to Alice's room and borrowed her phone. Bella picked up on the first ring.

"Alice?"

"Edward."

"Hi," she sounded relieved.

"Where are you?"

"I just got home, it's fine," she said. "I'm in my room."

"How's your hand?"

"Um. It's OK."

"Really?"

She sighed. "It's a hairline fracture."

"It's _broken?_"

"It's fine. It really doesn't hurt that much now."

"What _happened_ tonight?"

"Well, I got sick and tired of all this evasion so I went down to the La Push bonfire to talk to Jacob. I knew he'd be there."

"And?"

A pause. "We didn't have a very good conversation."

"Did _he_ hurt your hand?"

"We just had a bad conversation, OK?"

I huffed. "I don't like you going down there by yourself like that."

"I wasn't _by myself_," she protested.

I sighed. I didn't want to scold her. "I'm glad you're all right," I told her.

"What about tomorrow?" she asked. "Can I see you?"

"Um, I don't know yet. Carlisle took my car keys away." I could always ride my bike…I really couldn't bring myself to care about getting in more trouble. But wait, I almost forgot:

"What does your dad know?"

"OK, so when you told me that Carlisle and Esmé knew, I went and told him you had asked me out."

I considered this. "Just laying the groundwork in case new shit comes to light?"

She laughed. "That's right, dude."

"OK, that's it? What did Jacob say to him?"

She said slowly, "I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out."

"So your dad didn't say anything about it?"

"He was only asking when you and I were supposed to go out together. But…he's acting a little weird and quiet."

She paused. "I'd better go. I don't think I should let him catch me talking on the phone this late."

"OK. I love you."

"I love you more."

I smiled into the phone.


	41. Chapter 41

**Chapter 41, **_**in which Edward makes **_**another **_**trip to the emergency room**_

On Sunday morning Bella texted me to say she had to go to Port Townsend with her dad to buy new sheets and towels. Maybe this was for the best. I spent the day at home, shooting hoops with Jasper, who advised me to lie low, and shooting pool with Emmett, who advised me to lie low and then kick Jacob Black's ass when the earliest possible opportunity presented itself. Carlisle locked himself in his study and worked on his proposals all day, which gave me a tense feeling in the pit of my stomach, then in the late afternoon he drove off to the dig site to pick up some binders of data left behind at the trailer-office. Around 8 pm, the house phone rang and I picked it up. It was Carlisle. He sounded terribly frazzled.

"Hi, Edward, let me talk to your mother."

"Um…she's in the bathtub. Do you want me to get her out?"

A pause. "I'm at the emergency room. I'm OK, but I need a ride home."

"_What?_"

He sighed. "I didn't want to upset you kids. It's OK, it's just a bad bruise on my leg and a cut on my forehead."

"What _happened?_"

Another long pause. "I got jumped by some kids at the dig site. I'm OK, it's OK."

I felt positively sick. This was _so_ far beyond the pale.

"OK, dad, I'll come right now."

"OK." I guess he was too discombobulated to object.

I ran upstairs and knocked on Esmé's bathroom door. She was done with her bath and just coming out, wearing her robe and with a book tucked under one arm and a wine glass in the other.

I told her quickly what had happened. She looked horrified. She said she would drive down there, but then looked at her wine glass and said I had better do it. She went to a box on their dresser and fished out my car keys. I took the stairs two at a time and headed out.

When I got to the emergency room, Carlisle was in the waiting area. He looked pale and shaken up, and had a bandage over one eye and blood all down the front of his shirt.

"Did you have to have stitches?" I asked.

"No, it wasn't that big a cut. It bled a lot, though," he said, indicating his shirt.

The bigger problem was he had a deep bone bruise on one thigh where he had been kicked, which made it hard for him to walk. I put my arm around him and helped him out to the car.

"How did you drive yourself here?" I asked.

"Adrenalin rush."

In the car on the way home, he told me what had happened. He had been in the site, collecting his binders, and when he was coming out of the site and closing the gate, three figures had approached. One of them had shouted that the dig was shut down and he had no business being there, and the three of them had set on him, punching and kicking. It was dark and they were wearing hoodies and dark pants, so it had been hard to get a good look at them but one thing he did notice was one of the guys had a shiner.

"He had a black eye?" For some reason that reminded me of something on the tip of my brain.

"Yes."

"They were Quileutes?"

He paused. "Yes."

Obviously they were still patrolling. Carlisle had had permission from the tribe to come by the site and pick up his things; these guys either didn't know or didn't care that he was there legitimately.

Luckily for Carlisle, a car had pulled into the parking lot—probably a couple looking for a spot to make out, who else would come park at the beach at night—and that scared the guys off fairly quickly. They took off in the direction of the woods.

I said, "Dad, you need to call the cops. I'm sure we can figure out who they are. Bella knew the guys who stopped us, at least one of them."

Carlisle sighed. "I need to think about it. I don't want to alienate the tribe any further, dragging law enforcement into this."

"Dad, this is crazy."

"I'll sleep on it."

We were home by then, and I helped Carlisle into the house. Esmé had let everyone else know what was happening, and we sat him down on the couch so he could recount it again. The more I heard it the more upset I became. Carlisle had been given some Vicodin at the hospital and was starting to get sleepy, so Emmett and Jasper helped him upstairs. I went to Esmé and told her I would take Emmett to go back to the hospital and pick up my car, since I had left it there and driven Carlisle home in his.

"Oh, don't go back out for it now, you boys can pick it up in the morning."

I told her I realized I had left my iPod in the car in plain sight, so I needed to get the car tonight so it wouldn't get broken into. This was not true, but I needed to get back out and see Bella about this.

Emmett drove back to the hospital with me and dropped me off at my car. I drove to Bella's and parked down the street. It was almost 9 pm. I called her and she picked up right away.

I launched right in. "I need to talk to you. Carlisle was attacked. I am down the street from your house. Can you get outside?"

A minute later she was bringing a bag of trash out to the garbage can and she came and sat in the car with me. I told her what had happened. She asked whether Carlisle could recognize the guys, and I told her I wasn't sure but he had mentioned that one of the guys had a shiner.

She stared at me. "We have to go talk to my dad right now."


	42. Chapter 42

**Chapter 42_, in which Jacob gets his comeuppance_**

_She stared at me. "We have to go talk to my dad right now."_

Bella was opening the door of my car.

I objected. "What? No, Carlisle is not sure he wants to involve the police…"

"It doesn't have to be in an official capacity." She was getting out of the car.

I got out of the car too, and caught up with her, catching her arm. "But what are we going to say to him, exactly? What did Jacob say to him yesterday?"

"I don't know. He hasn't said. He knows about the dig being stopped by Jacob, basically. I told him this afternoon. I thought it best to go on the offensive and tell him that."

"This is too confusing. I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

"That's OK, I'll do the talking. Ring the bell in three minutes." She went back into the house. I paced around the dark street, thinking this all seemed like a terrible idea, but there was something about her manner that seemed so sure and confident that I caved and rang the bell. Bella answered the door. She conferred with me for a minute in the front hall, telling me to just tell Charlie what had happened this evening with Carlisle, before Charlie called out from the living room, "Bella, who's at the door at this hour?"

She led me into the room. "It's Edward. He has something to tell you."

Charlie stood up and looked at me dubiously.

"Sorry to bother you, Chief Swan. Um, I wanted to talk to Bella because my father was attacked this evening down at the archaeological dig site in Strawberry Creek…"

"By…" Bella prompted.

"…by three young Quileute guys wearing hoodies, one with a black eye." I looked at Bella questioningly.

"Dad, why don't you go over to the Blacks' house and see if Jacob has a black eye."

Chief Swan looked levelly at Bella. "Why do you think he does?" he asked, calmly.

"Because I think I gave him one last night," she said, raising her taped and splinted right hand.

"What?" Her father sounded shocked. "Why?"

"Because he kissed me. Against my will."

I felt like my head was going to explode. _I am fucking going to kill that guy. I am fucking going to rip his head off. _I suddenly realized I was pacing back and forth in Chief Swan's living room, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms. I took every ounce of will I had and tried to calm myself down and not storm out of the house and get in my car to go look for him. I took a deep breath and looked at Bella. Clever girl. This was probably why she chose to tell me this in front of her father.

"Calm down, Edward," her father drawled. He turned to Bella. "Couldn't this be some sort of misunderstanding…?"

"No. He knew perfectly well I did _not _want him to kiss me."

Chief Swan heaved a sigh. "OK. Bella, I want to talk to you for a minute. Edward, excuse us." He pointed upstairs and followed her up, presumably to her room. After a few minutes he came downstairs alone.

"So, Edward. I will pay a visit to the Blacks, and I understand from Bella that your father may be reluctant to press charges. I'll keep your name out of it."

I thanked him.

"But I'm not quite finished with you. You and Bella seem pretty…tight. What are your intentions towards my daughter, as they say?"

I cleared my throat. "I like Bella very much, sir."

"You must know her pretty well by now, after all the time she's spent with your _sister._"

I felt thrown off by this, and was not sure what to answer.

"Well…yes."

He nodded at me appraisingly. "You're a good-looking kid. You must not have too much trouble getting girls to go out with you."

I shrugged. "I like Bella. I'm honestly not interested in other girls."

He cracked a smile. "That so? You're not a player?" He made little quotation gestures with his fingers as he said "player." I frowned and shook my head jerkily, confused.

"I had an interesting conversation about you with Jacob Black yesterday."

"Sir…I…that is…"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Don't piss your pants, Edward. In light of everything that's gone on this evening, I am disinclined to take what Jacob had to say at face value."

He continued. "Actually, I sensed something was off while I was on the phone with him. Didn't sound right. Then, when I saw you dropping Bella off at the hospital, I put two and two together and figured out Jacob's got a bad case of resentment toward you."

I looked at him. He looked at me.

"Well, I'd better go pay a call on my good friend Billy."

He extended his hand and I shook it. As I withdrew my hand he gripped it tightly.

"Do not give me any reason to be concerned for Bella's sake."

"No, sir."

He released my hand and nodded. "Well, Edward, you'd better be on your way."

I moved toward the door, looking up the stairs towards Bella's room. I glanced back at him.

He looked at his watch. "It's a bit late, Edward."

I nodded and left, closing the door quietly behind me. Once outside, I released my breath in a huff, as if I had been holding it for some time. That guy was scary. I was not going to climb through Bella's bedroom window again anytime soon, no matter how tempting it was. Forget hauling me up on statutory rape charges; I got the sense he might actually shoot me.

**# # #**

When I arrived home, Esmé was waiting for me downstairs. Now even _she _was mad.

"Where have you been, Edward…you're lucky Carlisle is asleep, you should have been home long ago. _Why_ are you testing us this way?"

"I went to the police," I told her.

She put one hand on her forehead. "Edward, that is for Carlisle to decide, you should not interfere this way…"

"He was _attacked. _And I know who those guys were. Or, rather, Bella knows them."

She looked worried.

"I am trying to make things right. I just went and talked to her dad, not to the police station. OK?"

The next day, Chief Swan called my father. As Carlisle told me afterwards, he said that he had heard about the attack through his daughter, who was actually acquainted with the young men involved. He said he had had confirmation from one of the boys, and did my father care to press charges. Carlisle said he'd rather not, and Charlie said he should be expecting a call from Billy Black, the boy's father.

Billy called later in the afternoon to express his shock and deep regret about his son's behavior, to say that he was grateful that Jacob would not be charged, and that Jacob would be writing him a letter of apology and would work to pay for Carlisle's emergency room bill. He said that the elders of the tribe—who were unaware of this vigilante-type activity on the part of these youngsters—were convening that evening to discuss re-confirming the archeological dig in light of this new information. Carlisle said no monetary restitution was needed, but that if the dig and his work at the clinic could continue, he would be glad to have Jacob and the other boys work as volunteers at the clinic. Billy Black thought this was a very good idea and would bring it to the elders' attention at the tribal meeting.

The next day, Carlisle got a call to say the dig was back on. The dig was on, and we were safe in Forks.

_**Author's Note: Mwah ha ha, can you tell I don't much care for Jacob? I went easy on him, though. Originally I thought he was going to get arrested.**_


	43. Chapter 43

**Chapter 43, **_**in which Edward and Bella fulfill a little fantasy of Edward's**_

After another week and a half of restriction, for good measure I guess, Carlisle finally relented. The worst of the pressure was off, but it had suddenly become hard for Bella and me to be alone together. There were no more sleepovers with Alice, and even when Bella was just over in the evening I felt Carlisle's eagle eye upon me. We did sometimes find time alone at Bella's after school, but I was always nervous her dad would come home early, and whenever I was over there and Charlie was home I was careful to confine myself to the kitchen table and living room couch; I would not even set foot in her bedroom.

This parental watchdoggery was having an effect opposite from what they were intending, of course, simply adding fuel to the fire and making us even more obsessive…plus, as we had already discovered, the sneaking around and being furtive made everything kind of hotter. I felt like I was turning into a sex fiend. Or maybe it was just natural for my age and situation. During the period they weren't letting me out of the house I picked up a book of Esmé's called _Wolf Hall,_ about Thomas Cromwell, which had this reassuring line about how "Once you've done it, you'll want to do it all the time. For about three years. That's the way it goes."

So the policing on the home front was leading us into deliciously inappropriate behavior at school. The first time was on a Saturday, after a track meet. Bella had come to watch, and afterwards we were lolling about in the bleachers outside as the track emptied out. We had not been _together _for a week, since the previous weekend when we had tried it in the cab of Bella's truck, parked a little ways down an old disused logging road not far from my house after spending the evening at the Forks pool hall with Angela and Ben. The cab of that old truck was actually pretty roomy and with her astride me it was doable but still I felt a little uncomfortably hemmed in.

So we had not done it for a week, and also I had not even taken care of myself because Emmett swore up and down that _not _wanking or fucking led to better athletic performance, so I figured I'd test his theory with this latest meet. Now here I was sitting with Bella, feeling incredibly horny, while she was telling me how she loved that I was such a fast runner and also that I had nice calves.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, actually nice thighs, too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, you looked good out there today."

"Don't I always."

"You are so smug."

"You love how smug I am."

"Oh, I do."

"Well, if I performed so well, I should get a prize."

"What did you have in mind?"

"A shower."

She smiled at me. "OK. Want to come over? Charlie is out all day at a staff training."

"Um," I demurred.

She looked at me quizzically. "Come over tonight, then. It's been a while since you snuck into my room, incubus."

"No, I mean here."

"What?"

I pointed with my head back towards the gymnasium.

"What, in there? A shower in there? Oh…the men's locker room?" She looked mock-scandalized.

"Yeah."

"Aren't there other people around?"

"It's Saturday so they tend to clear out pretty fast. They want to get on with their day. It's already been, like, forty-five minutes since we wrapped up."

She gave me a mischievous look, so I walked her over to the gym and poked my head into the locker room. Deserted. I took her hand and led her in. The showers were mostly open and communal, but there was one handicapped stall equipped with a locking metal door, so we went in there and undressed each other, hanging our clothes on the hooks kitty-corner from the showerhead. I lathered her up, luxuriating in the sensation of her smooth skin all slippery with soap, and she lathered me up, and then standing behind her I made her put her hands on the tile wall and spread her legs so I could take her from behind. I stopped mid-thrust, however, when I heard a voice call out,

"Anyone still in here?"

It was Coach. _Hibbity jibbity motherfucker cocksucker._ I hadn't seen his car in the lot and I thought he had left, leaving the last one out to make sure the outside door was locked.

Bella looked back over her shoulder at me, wide-eyed, and I mouthed "fuck" and pulled out.

The shower was running, obviously, so he would know someone was here, and he would also be able to see our feet.

She turned and put her arms around my neck. "Pick me up," she whispered. Brilliant.

I picked her up and she wrapped her legs around my waist. I pressed her back lightly against the cold tile wall.

I called back, "Hey Coach."

"Who's still here?" came the response.

Bella was wriggling. "Stay still" I breathed. She smiled and shimmied down, finding the tip of my cock again and sliding herself back onto it.

Coach was still waiting for a response. "It's Edward," I called, my voice cracking. Bella was doing some clenching maneuver and my hips responded of their own accord, with a hard thrust. I told her "Shhhhhh."

Calling back to him again, I said, "I've got a charleyhorse…the hot water is helping." Bella undulated her hips, massaging me in a way that made me grunt slightly.

"Are you OK, Edward?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine." _Please, please get out of here. _

"OK…can you shut off the lights and pull the door fast when you leave?"

"OK, will do. See you later," I called. Bella wrapped her arms around my neck, arched her back and tilted her hips, and rode me, pleasuring herself. She bit me on the shoulder and I yelped.

"Son, are you all right?" he sounded concerned.

"Yes, yes…"

Bella started shuddering and clenching in that way I knew and loved so well. I clapped a hand over her mouth, pressing her against the tiles to prop her up. My arms were starting to get shaky from holding her up.

"It's fine."

I waited a minute or two to make sure he was really gone, then slid out of Bella and made her turn around and bend back over.

"You bad girl, this isn't going to be gentle," I bit her on the neck and thrust hard, holding her hips and making her brace herself against the wall and giggle, then came hard, wrapping both arms around her and making her moan.

Afterwards I darted out of the shower to find some towels, which we had forgotten about, and as we were getting dressed, I kissed her neck. She had another hickey.

"What was that about a staff training?"

She smiled at me, eyes twinkling. "Yes, all day."

"That's good 'cause I want some more."

_**Mmm, Showerward…Next Up: Bella and Edward in the meadow. Last chapter, then Epilogue!**_


	44. Chapter 44

**Chapter 44, **_**in which Edward and Bella lie together in the tall grass**_

"This is getting ridiculous."

"I know."

"I'm tired of all this sneaking around."

"Yes."

"Not to mention the angst."

"It's exhausting."

Bella and I had just made love and were lying half-naked in a meadow out in the woods atop an itchy wool blanket that was laid over a tarp. It was March in Forks, and after a several consecutive days of rare glorious early-spring sunshine, the ground was just dried out enough to take mountain bikes out on the woodsy trails. Bella had been wanting me to go out with her into the woods ever since we had had to read about Tristan and Iseult's trysts for English class, and I had found this secluded spot the summer before when Jasper and I were doing a lot of mountain biking in the Olympia National Forest. The grass was already tall with all the winter rain and there were bluebells blooming all around, and I could tell doing this outdoors was going to be quite nice once the summer warmed up, but as for now the breeze was kind of nippy and the sunshine promising in its brightness but still anemic in its warmth.

I propped myself up on one elbow and caressed her hair.

"I don't like to be apart from you."

"My sentiments exactly."

"We should get married."

"Married? Us? Really?"

"Yes, what do you think."

"Silly, we can't get married."

"Why not?"

"We're too young."

"Don't you want to marry me?"

"Not sure about you, but I want to marry your family."

"Like kind of a _Big Love _situation? Are you going Mormon on me?"

She didn't respond.

"Will we be having children?" she inquired.

"Of course."

"If we have a son we can name him 'Charlisle.'"

"I think not."

"You're so bossy."

"Yes, I am quite strict."

"You're kind of a know-it-all."

"You love that about me."

"I love everything about you."

"If you love me so much, you should marry me."

"OK, ask me about a hundred more times and maybe I'll say yes."

_Oh, don't think I won't, Bella Swan. I find you totally irresistible._


	45. Chapter 45

**Chapter 45: **_**Epilogue…from Bella's Point of View**_

Reader, I married him. How could I help myself? Yes, Edward Cullen is a little prissy. Yes, he has some martyrish tendencies. He can be a touch neurotic. But he is _soooo _athletic. I mean, look at him! And, moreover, he is such a smarty-pants. He's the cleverest person I've ever met. And, he loves me as wildly as I love him. So, in conclusion, how could I not?

But not right away. Bella Swan's not getting married right out of high school, are you kidding me? No, I insisted on waiting a decent interval. After another year slogging through Forks High I moved to Berkeley and went to Cal. Edward moved to Palo Alto and went to Stanford. (Take off that red shirt. Elitist.) Our senior year, we both moved to San Francisco and moved in together, commuting to school. Renée is still down under, so we get the flat in Duboce.

My freshman year, I randomly took a vertebrate anatomy class and one thing led to another and now I'm applying to med school. Edward took a comp lit class his sophomore year and one thing led to another and now he is working as a freelance magazine writer. He's also working on a novel, which he intends to get published before he turns thirty. He works from home, which is perfect because when we start having kids he can stay home with them. I'm getting a lot of backtalk on this. We shall see.

So we're about to get married. I know we're still kind of young to get married, at least for people living on the coasts, but hey, so were Romeo and Juliet. And look how things turned out for them! Plus, we both want a big family—once again, abnormal, as Edward says, for people in our socioeconomic class—at least _his _socioeconomic class—no, Edward, I am not convinced we're in exactly the same socioeconomic class—stop rolling your eyes at me—although actually, in major cities having more than 2 kids is now becoming a status symbol—anyway we figured we'd better get an early start. You can't get married at 30 and then have 5 kids.

And the rest of Edward's siblings, soon to be my siblings, de jure as well as de facto?

Jasper went to West Point, and Alice went to Pratt. _Then_ they moved to Paris. Did Alice really think she could outflank _Jasper_? Jasper got a job strategically advising French workers' unions how to make their strikes even more outrageously exasperating and extract even more concessions from the French government. Alice changed tack halfway through school and became a book designer. She now works for Flammarion.

Rosalie is in law school at Duke. She is going to specialize in class-action lawsuits and go after those corporations that screw over the little guy and pollute the environment, et cetera. It's fighting the good fight but also rather lucrative. Perfect. Emmett is running an after-school sports program for troubled youth. Those little delinquents adore him and are also kind of terrified of him. Also perfect.

Good old Charlie took up with the widow Clearwater during our senior year and was so busy sneaking around with her that he really fell down on the job of preventing Edward from sneaking around with me. It was a good year. Except for the part about Emmie and Rosie being gone away to college—"I actually kind of miss her," Edward would say in an amazed tone. Anyway, I think Charlie and Sue'll be married one of these days. Charlie's not a fast mover.

And, last but not least, while Cirque de Soleil was touring New South Wales, Renée and her boyfriend fell in love with Sydney and decided to move there. Renée says it's gorgeous like San Francisco with nice warm weather and sandy beaches like LA and outstanding Vietnamese food like Seattle. "I can't believe your mom moved to _Australia_"—says Edward—"does she hate you or something?" But I figure that just gives us another super cool place to go stay, in addition to Paris, obviously. They are getting married. She is happy to turn in Higgenbotham for Dwyer, though I say she should have stuck with Swan. Edward likes to say that swans are beautiful creatures with long, white necks that mate for life. I like to tell him that he's the chosen one.

_**-Fin-**_

_**But before you go, write me a review—it's my first story, so I'm dying to know what people think. Love, D. Fliegen **_


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